tenderness

The focus of designing minimal quilts is to produce work that has been reduced to its essence - stripped down to its essentials.  Gwen Marston
 

Un-sewing

It’s dark now in the mornings.  

I just want to work in the studio, sifting through fabrics and projects and landing on something worthwhile.  Plunge in.        

Today I’ll start by ripping out the fancy stitches I started to put into this piece in the spring.  I’ll put a window hour into un-sewing.  

Finally

 Should I use the gold and yellow handkerchief linen or the sumac berry lightweight cotton for the second side of this new piece? 

I’m going to use the cotton. 🩷

The present, the past, the bird singing

 I stayed up until 2:20 am and finished my quilt top with the polka dot sea and the starry heaven and am looking at it now on the wall and I think it’s done.  Enough for now.  No moon.  No stars in that space.  Just an atmosphere.  An empty space that I will hand stitch.  

Cool Old Lady Painters

 Last night I got caught up in learning about Rose Wylie; 90 years old - a British artist who has become the critics’ new delight with her Phillip Guston like cartoon paintings and her messy house.  Her and Isabella Ducrot are the latest thing in the art world.  I think Isabelle is 92.  

I love Ducrot’s paintings of flowers and dots and her use of old textiles and their sensibility, and I think I would be interested in Rose’s too.  Old lady painters.  Cool old lady painters. The world has finally noticed them. 

In the studio with no plan

Today:

Clean fridge.

Plan menus for 3 days and make grocery list. 

Walk with cane all the way to Cricket Hill. 

Recover from trips.

Water my plants.

Go into my studio for one hour with no plan. 

In a garden, beside the dark

 The sunlight must be spilling since one can see where it plunges into the river and spreads out bobbing on its broken surfaces.  She didn’t want to go on by.  But to stay.  

Lyn Hejinian